Speech #890072924

I can see no merit in a regime which. whatever its mechanical or statistical accomplishments. has wiped out every vestige of human freedom. persecuted all religions alike. and sought to convert its subjects into brainwashed robots. I can see no merit in a regime which has inflicted more suffering and cost more human life than all the wars of this century combined. I can see no merit in a movement openly committed to the conquest of the world. which practices expansion through subversion. through stealth and through fraud. and through socalled "wars of national liberation." I can see no merit in a regime whose terror has since the close of the war produced a flood of refugees--in Europe. in Asia and in the Americas--which by now must number some 15 million. I can see no merit in a Vietcong movement organized and supported and directed by Hanoi and seeking to impose its dictatorship by means of a terror that has. since 1961. resulted in the assassination or kidnaping of more than 35.000 South Vietnamese civilians. The refusal to recognize the fundamental moral differences between freedom and communism. this moral neutrality for lack of a better expression. is not a new phenomenon.